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Our Lady of Purification Catholic Church

New Mexico, US

Our Lady of Purification Catholic Church

Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria Mission is a historic mission church in Dona Ana, New Mexico near Las Cruces. It was built around 1844 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1985. It is built in the adobe vernacular in style. It is notable as the oldest example of an adobe vernacul

ar church in southern New Mexico. According to its National Register nomination, its ornamentation and detail "is simple, reflecting the modest resources of the congregation that built it in the middle of the 19th century. The building is of a cruciform floor plan with thick walls made of adobe brick molded by the parishioners and carried up to the site from the valley land below. Until the 1920s, when it was covered with tongue and groove hardwood, the floor was of dirt which often had to be wetted to keep the dust down. As shown by the oldest available photograph of the church taken around 1910, it was built with a flat roof using the traditional viga (beam) and latilla (small poles laid across the vigas) ceiling, and sealed with packed mud that would routinely have to be maintained. This stark, massive structure of earth had a plain twin-leafed entrance with a small window above it....

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